Setting: Six years after the eve war, everything is peaceful in the lives of the former gundam pilots, well as peaceful as the life of a cop can be for Wufei Chang, the life of a PI for the infamous Herro Yui, and the life of a parent for the eternally jovial jokester Duo Maxwell who's happily married, and working construction and revenevation.


Troubled Lives
Chapter 1


"Hey! Duo!" Darrel yelled across the noisy, over crowed tavern, to a colleague of his who had just walked in the door. Duo Maxwell, together he and Duo worked on the renovating, and reconstruction of old buildings.

Things hadn't always been friendly between the two, Duo being as cocky as he was for his junior age of 23 years vs. Darrel's own senior 37, but after working with the man for 4 years the two had become close friends with each other, Darrel couldn't help but like the guy, he was just too happy, too resilient, too any thing, but, duo, to be disliked for long. Darrel was about 6 ft, with dark olive skin, and dark curly black hair and green eyes, a strong nose and a stubborn chin, wearing a red, and gray plad shirt, with faded blue jeans.

"You Ok man?" Duo who was usually a smiling hyperactive man, standing at about 5'9, with long chocolate brown hair, worn tied back in a tight braid, his usually twinkling brown-blue eyes, were glossy with dark bags underneath them. His normally large, stupidly happy smile nothing but a tired frown that just didn't seem right, his skin was pale, and looked clammy.

"I don't know Darrel... I think I'm coming down with kylie's cold."

"You sure you want to stay here, if you're coming down with a cold you should go home, get some rest."

"You're probably right—"

"Probably!" Darrel barked at him jokingly, "What are you talking about? I'm always right!" Duo heaved a chocking laugh as he pulled his black leather jacket closer to him that choked laugh soon turning into a coughing fit.

"Get home, and get to bed, you bum! You look like shit!" Darrel smacked his back as he tried to help him get his coughing under control.

"Cough- Yah sure, thanks man. You –cough, erm—sure know how to kick a man when he's down." The comment was clearly maent to be sarcastic, but, the way it came out, it made darrel feel almost remorseful, he damn near pitied his friend, he was going to get a lot worse before he would get any better.

"You sure you can get home alright?" Darrel looked skeptical as Duo tried to rise from his seat, he swayed and stumbled a bit at first but he managed to steady himself before he could fall or knock into someone.

"Yah. I'm good"

"You sure?"

"Who are you? My mother or my boss?"

"Neither. But I don't want to hear tomorrow that you had to have brains scrapped off the pavement." During the short argument Darrel had stood and helped his friend towards the door.

"you wont." they were now standing in the middle of the tavern's small dirt gravel parking lot.

"Ok. man... I'll take your word for it...but if the Mrs. gets pissed, cause you get hurt, it ain't my problem man. It's all on you. I'll just tell her I Told you so."

"yah.yah.yah. what ever man. I'll see you tomorrow." Duo closed the door to his candy apple red 2002 candy apple red ford chevy.

"No you wont," Darrel leaned in on the door to the chevy. hanging through the open window. "The way things are now you'll be too sick to come tomorrow let alone be of any use to us." Darrel listened as Duo tried to laugh again, and shook his head. 'Ohhh... yah. He's not coming, tomorrow he's gonna be one sick puppy.'

"Ehhh... you know these things better than me so I'll count on it."

"good." .

Duo stated the engion, and listened to it pur for a moment, "see you when i see you Darrel."

"Yah see you." Duo pulled out and drove off down the small town gravel road. Darrel watched a feeling of dread beginning to pool in the pit of his stomach. 'God.' His mind whispered 'I sure hope that I wont wake up tomorrow and find your obituary in the paper.'


End Chapter 1.


Chapter 2. will be posted when I recieve 10 reviews for this chapter and that's that. I'll move on and probably forget about what i was going to do with this fic. but hey its all on you guys. Sorry it was short, but I promise things will start moving faster and getting longer in the next few chapters...-.-... thats if i get that far. its all up to you.


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